


The Worst/Best is Still to Come

by agentcarrterr



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Sexual Content, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-21
Updated: 2016-04-21
Packaged: 2018-06-03 14:44:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6614698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentcarrterr/pseuds/agentcarrterr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alistair has just fought an Archdemon and helped end the Blight. This means the most difficult part of his life is over and now he gets to marry a beautiful woman and become King of all Fereldan. Except the hardest part of his life still lies before him, as he begins his unexpected life as a ruler and his new reluctant role as husband to Anora.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Worst/Best is Still to Come

**Author's Note:**

> Slight unrequited Alistair/Female Surana and mentions of Alistair/Morrigan. Exploration of Alistair and Anora's relationship. This chapter contains graphic descriptions of nudity but no actual sex.

Alistair stands in the middle of the lavish royal suite, and his eyes fall on the paintings and tapestries, on the gold decorations and velvet-lined furniture, and on the bed that looks larger and softer than anything he’s seen in his life. _I guess this is my room now_ , he says to himself, with more apprehension than excitement.

 

With a sigh, he looks around for his new bride, surprised when she hasn't followed him into the room. He turns around to find her and almost chokes when he sees that she is already taken off her dress and is wearing only a thin shift. Her back is to him and he coughs loudly and tries to avert his gaze away from where he can see the outline of her naked form through the sheer material. With wide eyes, he tries not to stare at her thin and graceful body as she bends to place her folded dress onto one of the large, velvet chairs. 

 

He shifts his weight awkwardly from foot to foot, clearing his throat and rubbing the back of his neck, shocked at the suddenness of this new development. _With Morrigan at least I had some_ _warning_ , he thinks.

 

The need to make a joke to lighten the tense atmosphere of this huge but stifling room is almost burning him but when he opens his mouth, she turns and gives him a hard look over her shoulder like she can tell he wants to say something more stupid than witty.

 

He snaps his mouth shut and watches silently as Anora moves past him to lie down on the bed. _Thank the Maker, she just wants to go to sleep._ Relieved, he lets out a breath he didn’t know he was holding.

 

Alistair starts to unbuckle the complicated leather tunic that he was forced into for the wedding, when he looks up again at Anora. He tilts his head in confusion. _She hasn’t even let her hair down yet_. Her hair is still bundled against the bottom of her skull in those tight braids with buns at the back of her neck. _That can’t be comfortable_ , he thinks, _Surana always — well Surana liked to take her hair down when in she was in camp_.

 

“Here let me—” Alistair starts and catches himself. She probably won’t like that anymore than she would like him trying to take her hand in the Chantry. He shakes his head to cover the shudder through his body at the memory of the absolute disgust that she conveyed with that simple movement.

 

With his tunic only half-unbuckled and his hands still hesitantly reaching out, Alistair feels like his feet are nailed to the floor. He tries to step forward or reach up to take his tunic off, but he is paralyzed in the middle of this ridiculously large and luxurious room. 

 

Anora shoots him a hard glare that is completely unmatched with the practically transparent bit of fabric she is wearing and her seemingly unconcerned pose on the bed. 

 

“Well?” she asks, raising her eyebrows. When Alistair still doesn’t respond, she sighs heavily, “They are waiting for us to consummate our marriage.”

 

_They?_ thinks Alistair, _all of Fereldan?_

 

“You are a virgin, yes? So this shouldn’t take long,” she says with her stony gaze appraising him.

 

“No, umm not entirely. I- I- I have before- once,” Alistair stammers, trailing of into an unsteady whisper.

 

“Hmm,” she says, uninterested or unimpressed. After a few moments, she continues, “You will bed me tonight and not again. You are a Grey Warden,” she says with a nod of her head, “so are likely infertile and so I will not carry my heir.” 

 

Almost to herself she adds, “I will need to choose someone of the royal line soon to become King after my death,” and then she raises her eyes again to meet Alistair’s as if daring him into conflict, “and I fully expect you support whomever I choose openly and publicly.”

 

“Yes, of c—” Alistair begins before Anora cuts him off.

 

“Shame about Connor being a mage,” she says, speaking again to herself, while she steps out of bed and moves across the room to pour herself a glass of water out of an elaborately carved golden jug that sits on another elaborately carved wooden counter.

 

“You will take a mistress,” she says with her back to him in between sips of water and a nod of her head. “But you will do nothing to embarrass me in court and undermine the strength of my rule.”

 

“I would never—” Alistair begins. Honestly, he hadn’t even thought of infidelity up to this point, but it wasn’t surprising to hear Anora voice it considering what he knew of Cailan. 

 

_How did I let Surana convince me to do this?_ he thought with chagrin. 

 

And then he thought, _Of course you let Surana convince you to do this you foolish and gullible man._

 

Alistair had spent all of the dark hours of the early morning as he lay in bed after the battle unable to find sleep, trying to convince himself of the silver lining to this massive storm. It was the most practical plan for the good of the kingdom. He could have been dead by the Archdemon, but instead he was going to become King and marry a beautiful woman. Everything was looking up.

 

He almost groans aloud with just how stupid he had been. Fear curdles in his stomach — this is worse than he ever could have imagined. To live his whole life bound to a woman who despises him, and to never to know love or family, that is what he has allowed himself to be resigned to.

 

He remembers again like a viscerally brand how she had torn her fingers from his with such revulsion. It was his wedding day, a day he had anticipated and imagined as the most joyous day of his life since he was a young boy and his bride couldn’t even stand that simple touch or lend him the barest amount of support.

 

He feels tears start to spring in his eyes. “I’ll be dead within a few years of the taint anyway, so you can rule alone then like you want,” he says turning his head away and desperately trying to keep the quaver out of his voice.

 

He might be imagining it but he thinks she says, “I expect as much,” as she turns around to walk back to the bed.

 

Alistair looks at the ground, blinking the tears out of his eyes and swallowing hard. The sound of the blood rushing in his head is almost enough that he can’t hear the rustling of the shift and the sheets as Anora lifts her hem and drags her shift over her head. 

 

He sees the shift drop in a pile to the floor out of the corner of his vision 

and gulps as he slowly and painfully draws his eyes up to see her laying naked on the bed.

 

Despite the tears clouding his vision, she is just as beautiful as he might have imagined. Her long neck leads to two shapely round breasts tipped with vermillion and the dip of her hips lead to a small triangle of pale, blonde hair that rests between her thighs. 

 

He swallows trying to hold back the tears that threaten to spill over. He tries to take a step forward to do what he must — what he has promised and sworn to do, to Surana and to Fereldan.

 

But he can’t. He just _can’t_. After watching Duncan die, after holding the fate of the country and the world on his shoulders, after impregnating a woman who hates him with a child he will never meet, after marrying another woman who hates him, even after all that he has had to do, after all he’s been through, this is the thing that he can feel break him. 

 

The tears start to fall in embarrassingly wet, hot rivulets down his face and he can feel his chin quiver even as he smashes his teeth together. He flushes with the fever of shame but he can’t stop. He can feel his body crumple as the weight of everything that he has come to endure hits him at once.

 

“I— I can’t. I just — I can’t. I’m so sorry.”

 

He is just _tired_. His body feels sapped of all the energy that has kept him moving over the past year. He turns away and walks brusquely across the room and has his hand on the door knob.

 

“Wait!” Anora cries out.

 

His hand stops where it was twisting the knob, and he freezes, unprepared for the desperate tone of her voice.

 

“You can’t leave, not so quickly,” she says, “They’ll know,” her voice barely above a whisper.

 

Ah, yes. This was the _they_ Anora was referencing. The crowd of nobles undoubtely waiting for the news that their marriage is now _legitimate_. His face purses with disgust at the thought.

 

He almost leaves with a vindictive slam of the door, but instead he slowly turns back around to her, his back pressing against the door. 

 

She’s holding one arm over her breasts as she beckons with the other.

 

“Can you just?—” Anora asks, almost pleading.

 

Alistair begins to inch towards her. This is the most vulnerable he had ever seen her and he had been there when she had been rescued from being held captive surrounded by torture rooms.

 

For the first time Alistair imagines what a dangerous and unstable position Anora would be in if the nobles didn’t support their marriage, didn’t support her. He looks at her with suspicion but in her face he sees what could maybe even be nervousness underneath her cold demeanor.

 

Inside Alistair wages a small war, before his feet begin their trek back towards the bed.

 

On his slow and treacherous journey of a few feet from the door to the bed, he watches her bend down to grab her shift from the bed and expose the long expanse of her back and her pert backside for a quick moment. He shakes his head, trying to stop his perverse observations. She leans back on her elbows on the bed, this time covered in her shift.

 

“Just if you could lie down,” she says softly, in a tone that was shockingly gentle coming from the Queen that he had only ever heard speak with strength and command.

 

“Alright,” he murmurs as he slips into bed, holding his body as far from her as possible.

 

She lays down, staring at the ceiling, her entire body tense and unmoving. 

 

He lays just as stiff, still dressed in his half-unbuttoned tunic and breeches, as tears start to dry in itchy lines against his skin.

 

As he begins wiping his eyes on the back of his hand and sniveling, she leans over out of bed and then thrusts something into Alistair’s face. Alistair looks down and is startled to see a handkerchief held between two of Anora’s long and graceful fingers. Thanking her, he uses it to wipe his eyes.

 

He is almost slipping asleep when quietly, from his side, he hears, “You don’t want to wear all these clothes to sleep in. You’ll feel uncomfortable tomorrow.”

 

Alistair begrudgingly admits to himself that she’s right and quickly moves his hands to strip off his tunic and breeches, leaving him in just his small clothes and undershirt.

 

After another long moment, Alistair reaches towards the other side of the bed and repeats, “Here let me,” quietly.

 

She jerks back from his hands violently and he drops them instantly.

 

“Your hair,” he adds, trying to explain himself.

 

“Oh,” she murmurs quietly, with a disbelieving glint to her eye.

 

“Just…” and he makes a half-formed spinning motion with his hands, “Yeah that’s good,” Alistair murmurs as she turns away from him.

 

Bringing his hands up lightly and touching his fingers gently to her hair, he finds the ends of the braids and slides the cloth tie out on either side of her head.

 

He begins to pull his fingers through her thick, soft blonde hair, slowly unraveling the braids. As his hands reach the top of her head, he can see the difference between the rest of her straight hair and where the braids have given her hair a gentle wave. When all her braids are down, he slowly takes his hands away from the softness of her hair.

 

“Thank you,” she says softly, into her pillow without looking back at him.

 

He sits up in bed for a second more watching her back underneath the thin shift move up and down slowly as she breathes in measured breaths in and out.

 

Then, he turns his back to her and falls asleep.


End file.
